Besides, why should we expect a consistent musical voice from a franchise that hasn't had a consistent directorial vision?

Amen. Hopefully, Yates and Desplat can find their stride in this film. Doyle's score wasn't bad and neither was Hooper's, but as this is closing out the franchise, I'd love to have something special as the last thing we remember.

Alien, The Mummy/Scorpion King, Star Trek and so forth all have a at least a handful of different composers working in different modes.

Yes, but those are a bit different. In those cases there was no overarching plan for a movie series. Take Star Trek for example. The Motion Picture was made; it was succesful (well, financially, anyway), so a sequel was made. It was succesful, so another sequel was made, and so on. Some of the films had lavish budgets, some had meager ones; some were hugely profitable, others actually lost money. Many of the production personnel changed from film to film. And the series spanned twenty-three years (thirty, I suppose, if you count the recent Abrams picture). All of these things would tend to make it unlikely for the films to be scored by a single composer. Actually, it's kind of shocking that half of the films were actually done by the same composer.

With Harry Potter, on the other hand, the plan from the very beginning was to produce a series. Barring some extremely unlikely box office failure, one could have predicted even before the first one came out that there would be seven installments. They have all been quite succesful, and there have been no wild fluctuations in their budgets. And they have been made pretty rapidly, the first six installments appearing over the course of only eight years. So I think it is actually pretty surprising that there have been so many different composers (and directors). Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

And I also don't see how it's reflective of someone dropping the ball. It's a lot to ask of a composer to spend almost a decade of his or her life on such a large ongoing project. And if composers are going to change, the decision has to be made: will the new composer be asked essentially to pastiche the original music, a la Ken Thorne with the Superman sequels, or will the new composer be trusted to compose music to the best of his or her own abilities? I'd opt for the latter in almost any case, as nice as consistency can be.

I think it's more that Warner Bros dropped the ball on being the caretaker of a film series with an amazing foundation of score music. Star Trek has ten scores, nine of which are wonderful. The only weak one is Generations. Paramount and the Star Trek filmmakers knew that even though they changed directors and even producers, they needed to keep the bar high for the music, where Goldsmith and Horner had set it.

By contrast, Harry Potter's first three scores (especially 1 and 3) set the bar very high. They are collectively yet another group of classic magical scores by Williams but no one sought to protect that within the filmmaking group or the studio it seems. They threw the fourth film to Doyle, who produced a mediocre score in my opinion. When that happened, instead of jumping in as caretakers of the musical legacy of Harry Potter, they turned around and handed the fifth score to a television composer with zero experience scoring films. That is in no way acting as the Star Trek filmmakers did after, say Generations when they handed things back to Goldsmith. They knew the musical legacy of Star Trek and they acted like it. The Harry Potter group has done nothing of the sort. They allowed the disgraceful television composer who produced a score that actually detracts from the film in places to come back and do it again, producing a score so bad it actually detracts from the emotional climax of film six.

THAT is my problem with the Harry Potter scores. And really, new composers could have come in and worked out how to use Williams' plethora of established themes and come up with new stuff and move things into their own style. I love Doyle's uses of Hedwig's theme but he fell far short of where he needed to be, based on the three strongly leitmotif scores that established the musical world of the series. I really hope that Desplat realizes that and balances the existing theme structure from the first three films with putting his own stamp on it. I am open to hearing what he does with film 7 but I really want the music to still feel like Harry Potter. Hooper's scores don't at all.

I think it's more that Warner Bros dropped the ball on being the caretaker of a film series with an amazing foundation of score music.
new composers could have come in and worked out how to use Williams' plethora of established themes and come up with new stuff and move things into their own style.

This.

I suppose by far my biggest gripe with the scores for films five and six is the almost complete lack of interest in the prior four film themes. It irks me that the series doesn't play out as an integrated whole musically.

As for the argument that few film series have a consistent musical tone (too many different composers), I would also state that Harry Potter is different. We all knew there would be a new Harry Potter film every 1.5 to 2 years. Like clockwork. Pre-production, shoot, post-production, repeat. Over and over again.

So the inconsistency with the scores irritates me because I feel proper planning could have prevented it, or at least nipped it at the bud after the mediocre fourth score. And then after Goblet of Fire, I would have said enough with the junior varsity team and paid to bring in some supposed musical ace (as was done with John Williams for scores one through three). Instead, Warner Brothers and the Harry Potter producers allowed Yates to go the complete opposite way by bringing in the untried Hooper. Because....they work really well together on television shows.....apparently.

Ya know, its funny. The mere thought of the Matrix sequels makes me mad at Warners for not demanding that the Wachowski's deliver better scripts. So for two major franchises I'm mad that the Big Studio didn't take away creative freedom from its hired talent. I wish they had interfered more somehow. And I'm posting this on a Star Wars fansite, a series where who knows what god-awful contrivance we would have had forced down our throats for a sequel to "A New Hope".

I don't claim to be consistent, just semi-constructively argumentative.

I totally understand where you're coming from now, even if we still disagree on the quality of Doyle's score.

Probably part of the reason this seems less important to me is that I have no particular connection to the franchise -- the first two movies bored me, the next two were okay but not favorites, I can't remember if I saw 5 and didn't bother with 6. So naturally the quality of the music for the last two, while disappointing, wasn't as upsetting to me as to a fan of the franchise.

That said, did they really expect to do all 7 films at a go? Wasn't there talk early on about how the kids were only contracted for one or a couple movies, because they expected to take long enough to make that the kids would age out of the roles and they'd have to replace the actors? Or something like that?

That said, did they really expect to do all 7 films at a go? Wasn't there talk early on about how the kids were only contracted for one or a couple movies, because they expected to take long enough to make that the kids would age out of the roles and they'd have to replace the actors? Or something like that?

Actually, that's a good point. Emma Watson has been known as the least interested of the three leads when it comes to continuing with the franchise; she just wasn't sure she wanted to even with the millions the three were each being offered. If memory serves, it was only after the fifth film was nearly completed that she (and the others) signed to do the rest. So no, even the lead actors were not definitively doing all films until only the last few years.

We will start this summer, it will take me all summer, I will not have many holidays, but again it's for good reason, for the soundtrack. I would take every opportunity to use the fabulous theme written by John Williams, I'd say it is not sufficiently used in the latest movies, so if I have the opportunity and if the footage will allow me, I will arrange it, turn away the theme... Well, I have no obligation to use it but I shall make it with great honor and pleasure.

"It's amazing. This is an big project which I have for this summer, which is going to take me until September. I am very proud because I find that Harry Potter are brilliant books, sometimes slandered , what I find ridiculous because they are really brilliantly written. And then movies are all different. There it is an amazing director, who is called David Yates, who is really talented, who has already realized both precedents and who goes realized the last two episodes. Thus this one, it is the last front. And because the music theme which was created by John William for the series is absolutely fantastic. John William is a total genius. And I have no obligation to use many of the theme, but I know that I shall make it with pleasure, because it is a lesson of melody. I am going to attack that with a lot of energy, enthusiasm and enjoyment. I read at the same time the French and English versions of the book. And then I read the script. I am going to wait that the movie is editing. I am soon going to see it, in some weeks, I go to see that edited."

Orchestrator Conrad Pope on Facebook: "Working on Alexandre Desplat's new score for the next "Potter". Exciting, vigorous music! Harry flies, fights and conjures. All accompanied by the distinctive, definitely non-generic voice of Desplat. Those who love melodies, harmonies and emotions in their film scores should be pleased. Reminds one of the old days. Stay tuned." And apparently the score is 100+ minutes.

As if they suddenly care about the music. If they did, they never would have allowed Nicholas Hooper anywhere near the movies.

I don't know who "they" is, or how much clout the director has vs the producers, but I suspect that was simply Yates choosing to continue a successful working relationship with a composer who'd done well by him before. I also don't know how the contracting works, or what sort of terms Hollywood contracts have, but if Hooper was contracted up front for two films, and the scores were not well received, that could explain why Desplat was only contracted for one at a time.

The suits that either are the producers or the suits that influence the producers of the film directly. The same normal people that influence decisions like this for every other film/franchise in Hollywood.